Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Censoring Their Message Boards?
lost_packet writes "Today's Boston Globe has an article about yahoo removing posts from their chat boards. quote:"The truthfulness of these messages wasn't in dispute, said Yahoo chief executive Jeff Mallett. But the company took down the material to reduce its impact. Yahoo has to ''be careful'' because ''what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives,'' Mallett said in an recent interview." " The scary thing about this is that if you remove messages, you are supposedly liable for the rest of them. Its definitely a sticky situation.
It all depends on the system first being owned by the government or being owned by a private party. It is also entirely dependant on what type of speech is being passed on.They usually can't restrict speech unless it passes such tests as the 'clear-and-present danger test'. The Government could demand slashdot remove a post about mainframe computers because it fails this test because it is a threat to national security. The government can't ban hate speech just because it is offencive or because it has the possibility to ensite action. And last of all there is a diffrence between obsence speech and indecent speech. (indecent can be regulated to a venue where children are unlikely to expirence it, but obsence speech can be banned).
For example, they have to remove stupid spam, and highly offensive posts. They have no choice - the boards would become unsuable otherwise.
Yahoo has a history of legally and morally questionable dealings with their chat rooms. 'Gee, lets promise the user anonymity and then give away all the information we have on them at the slightest threat! And then we'll delete all the posts we get complaints about!' This is just the first time Yahoo has been caught removing a post without a complaint. They did it preemptivly percieving a future complaint from either the DOD or Lockheed/Martin.
/. .
/. were intentionally posted to get a rise or otherwise waste the intellectual energies of the rest of the group, and while they shouldn't be auto-removed by the management, the moderators should always have the option of Flamebait'ing them into oblivion. That's what moderators are for; Rewarding meaningful content and beating down the rabble. Why would any of us want to look at 'f1r$7 p0$7! 1 @m 31337!'
Oh, yeah. Start packing up your cookies and posts. Rob and company CAN remove messages, in a way. Simply moderate them to -2, below the possible threshold. I have seen a few posts 'go away' in this manner. (Mostly because of the 'short post' penalty, I am assuming.) Unlike Yahoo's censorship, I don't think this would affect the 'common carrier' argument, since it would take a collabrative effort among moderators, whose actions are not the responsibility of
As for keeping our own idiotic ramblings regardless of merit, I can say without hesitation that many of the posts moderated down on
.sig: Now legally binding!
While we Slashdotters may begin to bristle at the mere thought of someone suppressing any sort of information, Yahoo is well within their rights to moderate anything posted to their servers. I certainly would like to know what was removed as well as anyone, but I would never want their right to regulate what resides in their systems to be questioned or controlled in any way, as it could easily apply to me next. For the Globe to make a big deal out of a company removing content from their own servers seems like a much bigger deal to me.
Deosyne
Slashdot has moderators. So is slashdot responsible for spreading lies and slander should it appear?
This is true, the first amendment prevents congress from passing any laws that censor or otherwise abridge our ability to speak freely. Obviously, there was something wrong with that. Then, the fourteenth amendment was passed:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Several Supreme Court decisions have since made it clear that free speach goes under the catagory of liberty and that states can't deprive someone of free speech.
It is true that neither the first nor fourteenth amendments cover private speech, so yahoo can leagally censor all they wish, but it is inaccurate to imply that only the federal congress is prohibited from taking our right to free speech.
Rhapsody in Numbers
A lot of people don't quite seem to get it...
The scary thing about this is that if you remove messages, you are supposedly liable for the rest of them. Its definitely a sticky situation.
The fact that Yahoo! knows this (any lawyer should) and still decided to remove messages based on content is an indicator of things to come.
Common carrier status enforces free speech in a public forum by exempting the carrier from liability due to content (Correct me if this is wrong).
They're not worried about liability. They either think that they can moderate the hell out of it so well they won't have any problems, or that if anyone sues 'em they'll fight it to the teeth and win.
If they want to spend all their time moderating, more power to 'em, I say.
But if they win a case because they fought tooth and nail, they could end up setting a precedent that overturns the liability status due to moderation, thus making common carrier pretty worthless.
In other words, lets say Joe sues Yahoo! because Bill posted something evil about Joe's mother on their board, and they didn't remove it. Yahoo! goes balls out to win the case, based on the fact that they didn't post the content, and does in fact win because they have a lot of money and can hire all sorts of lawyers to blow the opposition away.
Suddenly, there's a precedent set. Now, even if you censor the hell out of your board, you're still not liable for any content you leave behind. Naturally, the owners of any public forum who wanted to censor before, but didn't because of common carrier status and exemption from liability, will censor the heck out of their boards now, AND STILL be exempt from liability.
That is a bad thing.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
'Riley also declined to discuss how the message gained the company's notice, except to say it was ''called to our attention in some fashion.''
*cough*
echelon
*cough*
'scuse me.
As the Boston Globe stated, Yahoo says it remove what it thinks will ``break securities laws or contain libelous statements''. Good gawd, does every Web site now have to become the arbiter of what's libelous and what's not? Damn near anything could be considered libelous if the individual being talked about is in a bad mood that day.
Deleting posts that could be in violation of SEC regulations seems simple enough. There are clear guidelines that regulate the kind of information that can be openly discussed during acquisition/merger talks, IPSs, etc. But who decides what's libelous?
How many people would Slashdot, Yahoo, etc. have to hire to pore over every post to make sure it didn't contain any libelous content? How could you possibly make sure that all these reviewers are thinking exactly the same was to ensure evenhandedness in the judgement of content?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"Mike Riley, senior producer of Yahoo's finance section, said postings now can be banned, even if they are true, 'if the message causes confusion'"
Even if they are true. Ouch.
Now, I'm not worried about what Yahoo does on their servers. They have a right to do what they wish with their machines. But I am worried about how much censorship society thinks is appropriate. Now we've gotten to the point where we can ban truth. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Year 2003: This is a public service anouncement. All confusing things are hereby banned. That is all. Thank you.
This sig is false.
I wish it was that way. Right now if I have a restaurant and for some reason don't want, say, liberals there, I can;t legally forbid them from comming - if I do I will be sued right away by 200 different "human rights" groups.
I see the responsibility of responding to so-called 'impactful' (What a non-concept!) posts yours and mine, and not that of the moderators. /. is a discussion; If the thousands of us haven't offered an alternate take on an 'impactful' post how can you honestly expect that one of the tens of moderators has one to give? (/me slaps himself for answering a 'funny' post in an 'insightful' manner)
.sig: Now legally binding!
Yahoo would be better off not censoring anything, because if they do, somebody is very likely to find them liable for something they did not censor.
If they know what is good for them, they will be perfectly neutral about it and stay away from actively censoring their site.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
too bad...I liked checking sports on their site.
That's the thing: when you start removing messages, this implies that you have somehow stamped your editorial "okey-dokey" on the rest of them. So if one slanderous message manages to get through, Yahoo is going to find itself a co-defendant in some really icky lawsuit.
Best to hide behind the "we don't regulate the content; we're simply in the business of providing the wire" defense.
Let's see its their computers, they should be able to delete whatever they want for whatever reason they want. What's the big deal?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Just refuse to use sites that censor their content. When you affect their bottem line they will listen.
Now, the moderation system here works wonders. That is, it works wonders to moderate down '1st post!'-ers and other trolls.
But what if sensitive personal information was posted? Say, Hemos' phone number and sexual preference? Or the password of a few Government mainframes? (I'm not saying they're of equal sensitivity, mind... :) )
How would the Slashdot crew react, then? Should the posts be removed under the basis of, I don't know, unfair use of a public BBoard system, thus exercising editorial control however limited? Should the post be left there? Should a system be put in place for messages to be permanently deleted from the system by a sort of moderation process? (Say, if it hits 5 -1's, it's deleted, or a special moderation category.)
I hope such a situation never arises on Slashdot, because I like the system as it is, moderated by the people, and every message available for reading. (I read even -1 comments, because sometimes they're insightful if not well-spoken, or downright funny.)
But, well... What if?
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
..we're somehow not free to dislike it? Or to say something when they claim that they want to promote ``open debate'' yet act in opposition to what they state?
You seem to be the victim of a rather flawed scale of logic.
~ Kish
It's amazing, isn't it? Due to a loophole in the way things work, Yahoo can actually legally do this. So can Slashdot. Or CNN. Infact, any business can. But why? The simple answer is that constitutional rights only cover what the government can do. A government official (which includes the police), or anybody on public property, can excercise free speech. Unfortunately, that's where it ends. When you're in my home and say something I don't agree with - I'm within my legal rights to give you the boot. You can do the same to me. Infact, to some extent (IANAL - any out there reading this?) your employer can tell you what you can and cannot say.
Now, don't take this the wrong way - I draw a distinct line between "legal" and "moral". The two are not synonimous in my book. Yahoo should not be calling their message boards "public forums" when infact they are not. I think it is morally reprehensible that they're silently deleting messages to protect their butts. Ironically, by doing this they may be exposing themselves to more damages than if they had left the situation alone! ie: If you could have stopped somebody from posting a libellous thing, and didn't, doesn't that implicate you as well?
Censorship is a thorny issue... welcome to the private side of it.
--
It would seem to me that the most intelligent means to accomplish the goal and maintain open discussion, would be to have a moderator respond to posts which need their 'impact reduced', rather than to simply disappear the messages.
Now that I have written the above statement though, I am forced to attempt to define what messages would fall into that category? What the hell IS that category? Perhaps a moderators post could present alternate takes on the subject matter, or remind readers that they cannot accept everything they read at face value (remarkable that grown adults would need this reminding, isnt it?) and in that way "reduce the impact" of messages that are simply too impactful.
Ooooo - this keeps getting funnier the more I write - what is 'too impactful'? For whom? What specifically does an excessively impactful post impact?
I guess in the end that the only thing I can say is, I'm glad this doesn't impact me, because I tend to hang around /. not Yahoo, and everybody knows /. has more impact!
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Exactly, right on.
Yahoo is a hotbed of that kind of crap, and the internet is already a rumor driven hysteria party as it is. BUT, BUT..
Constitutionally guaranteed free speach is one of the very few truly great things about America, one of the few ways an individual can get a break against big corps and the government. Free speech has to be zealously guarded because once you slip up once, once an outcry isn't raised then you lose that battle, you set a precident. Do you want to live in a place where an unpopular opinion can land you in jail?
I think there is a lot of political stuff going on that I can leave to the policy wonks to figure out,but I always want to know about free speach issues and even though I am going to have to wade through some non issues to learn about the important ones I think it's worth it.
As some people have already mentioned this is Yahoo's choice, The first ammendment does not extend to the servers of a private company, and if they are going to limit their censorship to the assholic practice of trying to affect stock prices through lies and rumors then maybe it's a good thing. But the potential for abuse is too great, as soon as you start a little censoring then the next thing you know someone is gonna start in on ideas they don't like. That's human nature and that's why we have an ammendment, we can't trust to good intentions.
I think people should vote with their feet. IF you don't like it, don't use Yahoo, and before you leave tell them why you are going. hit this link and tell them how you feel about censorship and then go elsewhere, it's a big ole www out there. Plenty of portals. We have seen recently how quickly a wired consumer outcry can get results. Apple, Real etc. This is actually a great moment for consumers on the net, I think we can actually have more of a voice then ever before, if only because we can make a lot of noise. But for this kind of thing to become a real force people have to keep doing it. Let's make those arrogant companies terrified of the consumer...
Remember money talks above all else and now that you can tell alot of people to take their money elsewhere you can actually get results. Plus it's alot easier than marching around outside some corporate office with a sign.
(he marches off to the strains of the international)
The current Yahoo TOS seems weaker on the subject of pornography than Geo-Cities used to be. In practice what counts as porn for Yahoo/Geo-Cities?
Other online message forums have been doing this for a while. http://www.h2g2.com The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, will remove some offensive comments if asked to do so by the online community that makes up h2g2. Normaly I would dissagree about this practice, however I agreed to the TOS that came along with the site. Because of my agreement not to post offensive comments I do not argue the decision for moderation.
it is better to light a flame thrower than curse the darkness. -Terry Pratchett Men at Arms
There is a huge problem socially, too. Censorship of mailing lists destroys those lists much faster than a few strong messages. Once you start down that slope, it is apparently impossible to draw a bright line describing where censorship ends.
In these stock trading boards in particular, I think people are looking for information that might be called 'insider information' to somebody with a rabidly litigious bent. Almost everything else on these boards is, frankly, garbage (and most of the alleged insider information is, too). By censoring the articles with 'impact', aren't you censoring the articles that people actually want to read, leaving only the garbage?
The Lockheed case is remarkable. What was posted was apparently the minutes of a meeting between Lockheed and its client in the Pentagon. The official apparently ripped them apart, as reported in a recent issue of Aviation Week. It turns out that this is not uncommon, the procurement offical in question has a very combative style, and she has been known to have similar meetings with other suppliers in the past. The information posted was never denied, it wasn't deemed to be classified, it was just embarrassing to Lockheed.
Censors, in general, have become more and more stringent with time. People posting to the channels will test the limits, forcing the censor to weild his authority more and more often -- and again this will destroy the use of the channel. I don't think that this has happened yet at Yahoo, but it has happened in other fora.
I agree with other posters that Slashdot's system works remarkably well. I was more than a little dubious at first, but the checks and balances coded into the system have prevented the abuse that censorship usually leads to.
I think that Yahoo will come to regret having started on this path -- or, more likely, will reconsider quickly.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I think that Yahoo should just add on a disclaimer stating that it it the opinion of the people on their message boards, and that there might be material on the board that is offensive or inapropriate.
The thing that should really scare any sort of publisher (/. in this example) is that once you've censored one post, you may no longer be considered a "common carrier", and then you can be sued for any other post that someone finds offensive for a variety of different reasons. IANAL, but it seems that the loss of common carrier status is more of a danger to the publisher than the effect on their readers of a few instances of censorship (for whatever reason).
I agree with you that it's probably OK for a publisher to remove an occasional, damaging comment. I'm just pointing out that such an action may cause more problems than it solves.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
A little off-topic, concerning Yahoo, but....
Ever heard of Juanita Broaddrick? The woman Bill Clinton allegedly raped in Arkansas? NBC Dateline did a complete story about her that was never aired because it was "too true." Check this out at http://listen.to/juanita
The fact is is that 10 companies control almost all of the world's mass media. They have the power to 'select' (censor) what is broadcast and what is not. The result is a very narrow slice of relevant information, information that usually never is earth-shattering.
What Yahoo does is completely their right, just as it is for mass-media corporations. What users need to realize is that alternatives exist, ones that are not moderated, both online and off.
Hemos' phone number
1800-DIALBLUE
sexual preference?
blue
Or the password of a few Government mainframes?
password
Can not a post be moderated below -1? And therefore become completely unreadable? Obviously the case can be made that it was not /. that did the moderation so we should be safe there. Just curious...
Blar.
Slashdot should not remove any posts until and unless they receive a court order... if they remove posts voluntarily, then they become responsible for monitoring slashdot's boards. If they remove posts when 'brought to their attention' then they become responsible to everyone who sends an e-mail flame complaining about a post here.
:) But without having talked to a lawyer, I think defending common-carrier defense is more important than just about any other issue.
If they wait for a court order, then they've only shown that they can remove posts when served a court order. I think.
Of course, what they should really do is contact their lawyers (or get a lawyer pdq) and discuss the issue. Maybe deliberately crash the slashdot box to get breathing time while trying to decide the issue.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
You are correct about the first two classications; however, there is a third one: Distributor (eg: book store). Most internet services would have fallen in the distributor classification before 1996. In other words, like a bookstore, they have no responsibility for the content; unless they were put on notice that a particular book is not kosher. It got complicated in that, if an ISP (such as AOL (et. al)) claimed to first review/edit content before it would made available for the general public, they could be held responsible in theory. Thus most ISPs, took a hands off approach.
In 1996, the CDA changed this. In an attempt to 'clean up' the net. Congress, in their infinite wisom (sarcasm), made a provision for liabel. It occurred to them that, if ISPs were to cooperate in removing obscene material, they would need to be protected, so as not fall into the "publisher" category, thus exposing themselves to massive liability. This provision is basically "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." It provided further language, to the effect, that no state or local law shall cross it. The CDA, in effect, created a wide protective blanket against all kinds of defamation suits. Though the majority of the CDA was struck down in 1997, these key parts remained. It has been tested a number of times in very broad scope, all the way up to the Supreme Court, and stood. In fact, some courts have held that an ISP is not liable even if they're put on notice of defamative content.
That being said though, providers like Slashdot (not too familiar with Yahoo's content) are possibly in murky waters, despite these precedents. It could be argued that slashdot promotes certain content (eg: the articles), as in basically creating it. Or that certain slashdot figures (e.g.: Jon Katz) are in business with slashdot, and thus slashdot is effectively creating the content.
A few people have yelled free speech here. There's a bit more to it than that. In the past disgruntled employees have posted things ranging from plans for future products to confidential information relating to the bidders for portions of companies undergoing a spin-off. Yahoo has been subpoenaed and released the information to the black guard of the companies in question. Employees have been hauled in and layed off among other less draconian things.
This isn't about free speech because the information divulged was under non-disclosure agreements. The employees agreed that for that particular information they would relenquish their free speech rights. They signed a legally binding contract. It would be more accurate to call the moderation or removal of lame "First post" posts a supression of free speech. The information is sometimes of a serious enough nature that the company and its employees could get into trouble with the SEC for attempting to manipulate the stock price.
Suppose that Yahoo had brass balls in these situations and refused to a) divulge account holder information and b) refused to remove the post. Yahoo would be held liable for the information.
I don't know the details of what has been supressed nor do I fully trust news sources (many of whom are owned by companies that consider Yahoo 'the competition') for those details. I just know a little tiny bit about certain happenings within my company.
Eventually slashdot is guaranteed to run into this problem. It'll be interesting to see how it will be handled.
Its actualy quite apparent that you know two things abour "Free Speach" "Jack" and "Shit"
The angle of the Dangle is equaly proportional to the heat of the beat. ---Beavis
I don't take posts off of my board, even when they are off topic. But, I think that a company has the right to remove (editing, of course, is different) any post. This is called moderation and has been done on USENET for years. The fact that they remove the post after the fact makes no difference.
Also, yahoo isn't the only company out there. If you don't like Yahoo's practices use another online forum provider, or better yet, make your own.
-- Moondog
A couple of years ago, I worked for a website
/.-style moderation of such hell-beasts works,
that gets a *lot* of traffic. They decided to
start a forum one day to discuss their content.
On the *first* day, the forum was filled with
crap spam advertising anything and everything
(mostly porn), and ridiculously few posts that
were on-topic. If posts were not moderated (read
"deleted"), finding relevant posts would
be like looking for signs of extraterrestrial
life by analyzing background radiation.
Remember where the term "moderation" came from
in the electronic context. Moderators of mailing
lists and Usenet newsgroups actively *deleted*
posts. It worked like a dream, though occasionally
there were disputes over posts that were
"censored".
If I'm a web publisher, I'm providing space and
bandwidth for comments, but I'm *not* going to
advertise your site for free, especially if
it's way off-topic. If the discussion is, say,
Pete Townshend's recent projects, I think
obvious spam about "FREE SEX FAST" should be
deleted.
Perhaps the moderation scheme would work. How
has slashdot handled this? It seems to me to
that it's reasonable to put some restrictions
in a user agreement. In my efforts, I'd like to
moderate comments, but also have some editorial
control (ok, deletion) for posts that are spam or
way off-topic (think KKK recruiting posts in a
music forum).
Now, newspapers and magazines seem to get away
with printing opinions of subscribers that could
be inflammatory or even potentially libelous by
making some statement to the effect of "The views
expressed by our readers do not necessarily
reflect the views of this newspaper". As a
publisher, I would want editorial control over
my product, but as a free-speech advocate, I
would want people to be able to post whatever
opinions they have, *as long as they are
on-topic*.
Before you flame, yes, I realize that there's
always going to be a difference of opinion on
what is and is not on-topic. Those should be
moderated. But ads for "FREE NUDE TEEN KIDNEYS"
don't really deserve free promotion in a forum
discussing Princess Mononoke.
If
great.Does anybody have any insight on whether
or not the spamsters get bored and go elsewhere?
Any real-world statistics?
sorry, but the /. model does scale to the number of boards yahoo has.
If I understand this correctly, Yahoo is removing illegal content and is basically now forced to censor inflammatory content. I think its brave that /. will allow users to publish items of questionable legality (e.g., a large number of posts for dummies), but there are situations where there's no easy way out. Here's an example.
Post 1. User A knocks sombody else's race.
Post 2. User B says knock it off that's rude - I am that race and I don't like that.
Post 3. User C says to kill User B. He lives at 12345 A street, Anywhere, USA.
The service removes post no. 3 because its illegal, but is now forced to remove post no. 1 as well, otherwise User B could now sue the service.
It's censorship plain and simple, but I don't think Yahoo has a choice, and to be honest, I admire the fact that they allowed free speech to begin with. Other companies have not had such great track records. AOL, for example, caused quite a stir a while back when they wouldn't let users access certain websites, and more recently, they may be in trouble for selectively banning certain words from user profiles.
Yahoo (from what I can tell)seems to have done a better job at allowing personal freedom than most services would dream of - remember, they either go to jail, get sued, or remove certain posts. I don't like the fact that they have to do this, but I think I can understand that they don't have a choice. Hopefully, Yahoo will simply draw the line at those comments that leave them open to litigation...
Does this remind anyone of the search engine that wouldn't refer you to any other search engines? i forget who it was, i think excite.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
What happened to the Yahoo Club Anti-Freepers?Did Yahoo delete the entire forum?Yahoo says 'no'. Anyone know if Yahoo keeps archives of materials on it's BBS.
The sue happy nature of the world's lawyers is getting out of hand.
Since the US Government is under the influence of China, I suggest we adopt another practice from them.
All lawyers, opon passing the bar, will be required to have their genitalia removed and placed in a jar which is to be hung around their necks. (Like the Imperial Court Eunichs of old.) This will accomplish two things. First, it will prevent lawyers from reproducing. Second, it will make it obvious who is and is not a lawyer.
I bet that you will find a whole lot less lawyers after this plan goes into effect.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Here in GA ( United States Georgia) Unless you ahve an express written contract. Your employer can fire you for ANY Reason. Yes thats right. You pass gas at mcdonalds it stinks. Your boss doesnt like it. They can tell you to walk! See ya no questions ask. I learned this the hard way at a telemarketing company. *cough* *Cough* there SunOS machine with the root password as 'root' and this is the sad part. that was the companies policy!!!! Not the administrators(me) choice. How lame is that? I mean it was a button pusher job anyways but still. When the system started dying they wondered why. So I have to talk with some computer-dudes up in the main NY office and they tell me to log what terminals are logging in as who. okay okay. In the end I refused to comply with these measures since I thouhgt it was the wrong way to approach 'system security' change the friggin root password you idiots! and due to me refusing this I lost a job. Anyways its funny ehh?
Many of the yahoo message boards are basically useless due to all the flames, spam, and idiocy. I'd be very happy if they payed someone do go through and just delete all that crap so a person trying to read something or learn something can. Also, they should had support for threading so you know what is in reply to what.
True. This would mean that if I went on a message board about Bayer and said, "Bayer rises from the ashes of 12,000,000 Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, and handicapped people," I could be censored. Even though my comments contain truth (to this day Bayer still has lawsuits against it regarding their use of humans as laboratory animals), Bayer might object to what I say.
The same principle applies if I say that Adolf Hitler invented the economy car ("Volkswagen" means "People's Car" in German).
This just all sounds too 1984-ish to me.
awkwardone
ICQ: 13709677
You can't jump without a
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
Well the same story happened at Slashdot,
when a story about USA bombing Yugos was
posted and had if am not mistaken over
500 comments.
The story was removed after some time.
/Alex
The reason Yahoo decided to do this is because of a suit filed against them some time ago by Raytheon (you know, the gov't contractor). Apparently, some of Raytheon's employees were "sharing" trade secrets with non-employees on those message boards. When Raytheon found out, they immediately got the gov't on Yahoo's butt and forced them to reveal the users identities (for "security" reasons). Supposedly, those employees faced harsh punishment for their actions. People shouldn't be blaming Yahoo for this form of censorship because, in truth, the gov't has the power to censor *ANYTHING* that they would see as a threat to national security and anyone who doesn't comply, well, I'll let you readers imagine what happens next.
If so, then you must have been serious when you asked what the big deal is. It doesn't revolve around what they /can/ do, it's the consequences of doing so (from a social and/or legal point of view). The other replies to your post go into more detail, so I will not duplicate that material here.
~ Kish
there is then an emotional attachment that permeates our perspective.
Speak for yourself.. I'm aware of what our constitution is for, our Bill of Rights, and exactly what the First Amendment was meant for. None of this holds any sort of "emotional" attachment for me. I would fight any attempt to rescind them, but I hardly swell up with teary pride when I hear the national anthem.
"Freedom of Speech" applies to the government. Everything else is simply a business decision.
By choosing to regulate some of the posts, Yahoo! is now legally responsible for all of them.
This is inaccurate. An information provider can regulate content upon being made aware of potential illegalities without making them instantly liable for all content they provide. So long as they respond in good faith and in a reasonable amount of time to complaints about certain posts, they're fine. This doesn't change a thing for Yahoo.
This is also hardly "new." Most (all?) message boards like this regulate their content in precisely the same way. Some may only remove stuff after an official request. Some may remove even potentially illegal material, and other may just remove everything they don't like. These are simply business decisions. They're perfectly aware that some policies will favor some people will making them look bad to others. This is hardly a free speech or ethics issue.
True, but the argument they would probably use in court would be that a restaurant is in fact a public place while it's open for business, and to some extent this is valid... Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits segregation or discrimination in places of public accommodation involved in interstate commerce. While this distinction may be somewhat dubious for your restaurant, the spirit of the law remains - as a business, you do have an obligation to provide your services without discrimination with respect to a person's beliefs. The only way you could categorically deny any class of people your services would be if they presented a danger to your establishment or to public safety. If they were in your home (which, presumably, is not involved in interstate commerce), then you could kick anyone you want out without being sued.
I'm sure I'll get moderated down for this, but here goes!
Moderators, PLEASE moderate the above post UP!
It's valuable to the discussion, it's interesting, insightful and fall-down-funny!!!
There's another point to make re: moderation, and whether it meets the guidelines of censorial conduct.
Moderators get a finite number of points - 5. Therefore, it is impossible for them to "censor *everything* they find objectable," if there are more than 5 such posts. If it's physically impossible for the moderator to accomplish the task, they can't be held liable.
I'm almost sure, too, that the number of moderator points slashdot gives out isn't even close to the number of objectable posts that make it onto Slashdot in total. Even if CmdrTaco tweaked the Slashdot software to introduce bunches more moderation, it still takes labor (i.e., willing bodies), and time that does not exist on Slashdot, that is, the moderator time to keep up with (and make progress on) the tide of crap.
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
1) Moderating the offending post up to #5.
2) Rob getting a few messages bringing this post to his attention.
3) A Perl script or the Apache server 'crashing' for a few minutes, during which some posts would be inexplicably LOST from the system.
4) Posters outrage that the offending post just happened to be one of the ones 'lost'.
5) Rob adding meta-meta-moderation to keep it from happening again.
6) JonKatz posting an article about civil rights in cyberspace.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
you can be canned at any time, but you may also leave at any time. it actually makes sense. no silly contractual employment bs.
I feel confident in my mate's abilities and intelegence, but what about the others that they work with? I didn't get the impression that there were written guidelines, that's for sure...
It boggles my mind how some people are naive enough to believe that simply because it is accessible to everyone, they *require* it to be free of any censorship.
Let's face it. Yahoo is a private _company_. They are out to make money off their product. They're not out there to be e-philanthropists. And to have damaging, wrong, or malicious information is definitely not ok to leave it on their boards. It's like "alright, I allowed you to use my paint, but you ended up graffiting the city hall. Sorry, no more for you"
I think people need to realize that as much as internet is for free-speech, etc, much of it is owned by private servers/computers/lines. They have, and should have, right to them.
I can't see yahoo having a good publicity for doing this, but I don't think they did anything particularly wrong.
hmmm...
Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 provides protection for "good samaritan" blocking of "objectionable material." If an "interactive computer service," e.g. Yahoo, decides to "restrict access to or availability of" their content, then they "shall not be held liable" nor "treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided."
In short, Congress has changed the common law, which you have correctly identified.
Congress has specifically decided that interactive computer services like Yahoo are not liable if they undertake efforts to censor "objectionable" material. See 47 U.S.C. 230.
Here is an excerpt:
(c) Protection for ''Good Samaritan'' blocking and screening of
offensive material
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided
by another information content provider.
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
held liable on account of -
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict
access to or availability of material that the provider or user
considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively
violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not
such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to
information content providers or others the technical means to
restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).
Hemos' phone number and sexual preference? Or the password of a few Government mainframes? (I'm not saying they're of equal sensitivity, mind...
Hemos Phone number: 156486135 (note, I don't know it and I don't even know the number of digits US phone numbers have, so if this is the good one, I am an awfully lucky bastard that will play Lotto tomorrow
Hemos sexual preference: it's well known that it is Hamster.
Password of few government maiframes:
www.slashdot.org (it is a well garded secret that
Login: hemos
Passwd: H4mst3r
www.transmeta.com (and you thought Transmeta really existed?)
Login: torvalds
Passwd: linux
dod.microsoft.com (the place where they are developping their next cyber weapon that will make no computer on the planet work correctly, codename: Windows 2000)
Login: billg
Passwd: monopoly
area51.dod.gov (where they keep all their archives on Alien contacts)
Login: mulder (you thought he was the good guy, false, he is a double agent which aim is to confuse the public and make them believe their is no conspiracy)
Passwd: iwanttobelieve
www.cultdeadcow.com (didn't you know that BOY2K was a troyan to detect script kiddies)
Login: boy2k
Passwd: W4r3Z
This should be enough, no?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
"what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives"...
Am I the only one who thinks that if a web bulletin board has any kind of significant influence on your life, you've got bigger problems than whether or not the site deletes offensive comments?
I mean, really. Go outside!
Pancakes is the better part of valor.
Maybe yahoo needs to implement a system of moderation, and meta-moderation.
---
"...silence is a dangerous sound."
A government official (which includes the police), or anybody on public property, cannot prevent you from excercising free speech.
--
(vr starts emacs and type 'M-x spook')
:-)
For as long as I can remember, people have been using the Yahoo message boards in order to attempt to manipulate stock prices through rumours and libel. Yahoo is finally doing something about this, despite the certain threat of outcry from free-speech activists.
The first 5 words in the First Amendment are "congress shall pass no law...". It's in there to prevent people from getting tossed in jail for speaking out against the government. It is *not* supposed to guarantee that privately-held companies should be forced to allow anyone to post anything using their systems. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Why do I, as a Canadian, understand more about the First Amendment than most Americans do?
- Drew
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
I wonder if Yahoo, after removing an "objectionable" post, supplies the company with the poster's information. That's a danger. It looks like Yahoo has been assimilated back into the Old Economy.
And the other danger, which is obvious but needs to be restated anyway, is that "sensitive" (i.e., damaging) information pertaining to a company may be deleted from public view.
[ech] So if the bomb-making factory or power company's nuke plant is poisoning its workers and carrying increased overhead in sick time [/ech], or if a company doctors its books, etc., that profit impacting info is good to know before the end of a reporting period. I.E., why use a financial message board if the important posts are going to be censored? Answer: Don't.
from the "banning" link above...
"The arbitrary nature of the word filter and AOL's apparent lack of enforcement on its hate speech policies inflamed the gay community. " lol
A lot of that article points at the difficulty and inherent problems with filtering and censorship, mainly: If you take the first step and not the rest you become liable (one of the most abused words in English, IMHO) because you have taken responsibility.
Comments are owned by the Poster.
And the responsibility therein should be contained. In your above example (go here and kill him) the illegal post should be prosecuted, not removed and ignored. A follow-up post similar to "The Above post violates U.S law #yada yada, it's owner is currently being tracked and will be prosecuted." And then when he is it should be widely publicized. Public humiliation and jail/fines are often a useful deterrent for inapropriate public behaviour. i.e. punishing children for doing things wrong teaches them, ignoring them for doing things wrong makes it seem allright.
+&x
when first we practice to censor
er
that didn't ryhme very well...brb!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I believe in the power of the system, too, just don't have much faith in the people running it. ;-)
It will be interesting to see how this plays out...poor Internet, he gets blamed for so much, seems he's always causing trouble!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
It seems like that annoying "Yah-hoooo-ooo" yodel that tags their commercials would be more fitting if sung through a gag, like the guy in the icon for this thread:
Uah-hmmmm-mmmf...
_____
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
how vastly we improve our style.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
This is not Correct. B'nai B'rith has been jamming/spamming USENET with impunity for some time. Witness alt.revisionism. B'nai B'rith is even behind legislation in Europe that has *jailed* people for writing *books*. To see what they're trying to hide, visit: http://www.lebensraum.org/index.html
If Yahoo removes comments they feel are inflammatory, where can one possibly draw the line? Censorship in it's fullest form, selecting individual opinions and removing them from public exposure. I don't know the specifics of this message, but if I use a public website as a facilitator for one-to-one interaction, I respectfully demand that such interfaces are allowed to transpire unmolested. So Rob and Co., leave all our idiotic ramblings and flamebait up for all the world to see, 'cause that's why we put 'em there.
+&x
"The scary thing about this is that if you remove messages, you are supposedly liable for the rest of them. Its definitely a sticky situation." Wait, why do we care about the liability of these censoring clench-butts? Clyde
As for information on financial message boards - news flash folks - the SEC doesn't exactly support traditional free speech. In the finance world you can't simply say what you want whenever you want. Quiet periods, inside information, etc. are all situations in which the SEC forbids you to speak your mind, if you are involved in a situation that they have governance of. If this disturbs you, don't become a securities trader or executive.
As for slander, defamation, etc., there are also serious legal implications for hosting questionable content. Freedom of speech does not cover your "right" to say untruthful things that cause someone else signifcant damage, pain or suffering. Hence, there are serious ramifications for posting and storing such data.
THe constitional principle of freedom of speech has a number of specific prvisions in our society. Before spewing off, learn about them.
I posted this without clicking on the "No Score+1 bonus" or the "Post Anonymously" buttons, but it posted anonymously anyway. I think there's a Slash.pm problem here.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Let's see its their computers, they should be able to delete whatever they want for whatever reason they want. What's the big deal?
Well, the big deal is that people who provide message boards, chat rooms, etc. generally do not like to be held responsible for whatever gets posted to the message board or said in a chat room. I think that's a very reasonable wish.
Now, it so happens that under US law (IANAL and I am hugely simplifying) you can be either a publisher or a "common carrier". A publisher exercises editorial control over what he publishes and, consequentially, is responsible for content. Examples: newspapers, magazines, etc. A common carrier just provides the medium for somebody else's words, exercises no editorial control and is *not* responsible for content. Example: a phone company.
Cleary, Yahoo wants to be considered a common carrier and not a publisher for material on its boards and chat rooms. On the other hand, it cannot control content and at the same time claim it is a common carrier.
From my point of view, Yahoo should let everybody say anything on its boards. Trying to selectively delete 'objectionable' (to whom?) material is likely to get it into quite hot legal water.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I also know a certain site that censors their message boards.
Fine. They remove some postings. Everybody has to, pretty much.
What bothers me is that they won't say more about their policy than that they remove stuff "if the message causes confusion". Now what the hell does that mean? Pretty much nothing, right? Seems like they say they will remove anything they feel should be removed, for whatever arbitrary reason they wish. Badmouthing advertisers would just be one of many possible reasons.
This just causes less trust in anything you read in that forum. You never know how it has been doctored and for what purposes.
You know, it's funny. The internet was once a place that was almost entirely an alternative. Except for the explicitly moderated ones, email lists and newsgroups were an open, even forum for all to use. Sites were mostly homegrown ventures, and only actual company sites were owned by large corporations.
Look at us now. People complain because a forum owned by some big company is exhibiting their right as owners of the forum, on another forum owned by a big collective. We've come a long way? Someone needs to revamp some of the older mechanisms to deal with the problems we have today (spam, mostly).
"Common carrier" is a phrase thrown around a lot. It's an actual legal designation, given to a company by the FCC. Here is how it is defined. As far as I know, the rights afforded to common carriers do not extend to other companies unless they are in fact certified as common carriers.
:)
from http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/def.htm
Common Carrier
47 U.S.C. 153(h)(1991) "Common carrier" or "carrier" means any person engaged as a common carrier for hire, in interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio or in interstate or foreign radio transmission of energy, except where reference is made to common carriers not subject to this chapter; but a person engaged in radio broadcasting shall not, insofar as such person is so engaged, be deemed a common carrier.
Primary sine qua non of common carrier status is a quasi-public character, which arises out of the undertaking to carry for all people indifferently; particular services offered need not be practically available to the entire public and specialized carrier whose service is of possible use to only a fraction of the population may nonetheless be a common carrier if he holds himself out to serve indifferently all potential users; it is not essential that there be a statutory or other legal commandment to serve indiscriminately, rather it is the practice of such indifferent service that confers "common carrier" status. --National Ass'n of Regulatory Utility Com'rs v. F.C.C., 533 F.2d 601, 174 U.S. App. D.C. 374 (1976).
From that same page:
Content providers make information available on "servers" connected to the Internet, where it can be accessed by end users. Major content providers include Yahoo, Netscape, ESPN Sportszone, and Time-Warner's Pathfinder service." In re Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, Report to Congress, FCC 98-67 63 (April 10, 1998).
While this all may seem nit-picky, if you're goign to talk about things in legalistic terms, it's nice to have them defined.
Yahoo has been censoring sites and links since its early times. At least I know about this because I was censored by Yahoo in 1996. This happened with me and several sites referred to Mars.
:(
The thing happened when the whole group concerning UFOs, Aliens, parallel theories about Mars (pro and contra) was suddenly transferred from Mars Category (under Astronomy and Science) to Entertainment-Paranormal. One site was gone at all. The scandal that followed up manage to return the group to its general category. However one of the sites never managed to return to Yahoo. No mater that the author tried 5 times to reach them. A year later this same site "disappeared" from several search indexes.
Note that this strange event had to do not only with such things as the mystic "Circles of Fire", Hoagland's crazynesses but also with Stanley McDaniel's site, who I consider a relatively serious dissident. The most stupid of all was that Mike Malin, the guy who rules the intrumentation on Mars probes and a terrible traditionalist, suffered the same fate.
Besides. Some data gathered by one guy notes that Yahoo did this under request of some "scientific authority" from Stanford University. We never managed to identif the guy, but as far as know he did talk to Yahoo staff and they told him that.
So don't worry about Yahoo's censorship. They have taken care of what you think long ago...
"Quiche"?
I am not versed in "the game" but how is "quiche" interesting for Echelon.
I'd bet words like }:-) : Semtex, sarin, Falung Gong, militia, lockheed, Air Force One, Republic, Monarchy, amonal, Quebecois, secession, Fatah, Bin Laden, Zhirinovskiy, Odessa, Makarios, Janata, Sikh, Stinger, Patriot, Egypt Air, would be but "quiche"?
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Regardless of the right or wrong of Yahoo's actions, it's good to know that there is a far less censored source of global discussions: usenet. Let's never forget that.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I think everyone is missing an interesting point here. Is Yahoo, by reviewing and deleteing messages setting themselves up to be legally responsible for every message they don't review? Are they on the verge of surrendering thier common carrier status?
If I were Yahoo, I'd really think long and hard on this one. It seems like a very large task to rake through every board, every day, for questionable materials.
Final thought to ponder? Will this lead to Yahoo getting over zealous in their deleteing of message with a "better safe than sorry" type policy?
Who knows...
Quack